Disclaimer:

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is not mine. I'm only a fangirl.


Chapter 11 - A Change of Heart

Marinette should have known it would go this way. The twenty minutes she'd spent soaking in Gabriel Agreste's knowledge of silk suppliers was practically a religious experience for her. Mr. Agreste talked about fabric the way Marinette's father talked about pastry. She had the impression that there wasn't anything he didn't know, and that he'd spent a lifetime cultivating his extensive knowledge. But she only made it to Tuesday before she had to feign food poisoning so that she could get away from Agreste Tower early, transform into Ladybug, and fight an akumatized toddle terrorizing the streets of Paris. It was almost midnight before she'd broken the child's teething ring, and she was tired Wednesday, but Mr. Agreste asked her to come in to make up the time. She did, but then she had to leave an hour early when she got an alert that a college freshman was threatening to turn Paris into a fiery inferno over an impossible chemistry assignment.

Thursday she got to Agreste Tower just in time to have to turn around and handle an akumatized trash collector. She never made it to sushi with Adrien because she smelled like trash when she was done with all that, and she had to go home and shower. She had never felt more ashamed than she did standing in Gabriel Agreste's office later that night and telling him that the single project he'd asked her to work on — a simple dress — wasn't even done. He seemed stunned, and she left in tears, knowing she was going to have to resign and that it would mean she wouldn't see Adrien again anytime soon. She cried herself to sleep that night.

"I need a partner, Tikki," she sobbed.

"I know," Tikki said.

On top of everything, she was behind with her classes and the bakery was getting a ton of extra orders that she wasn't able to help her parents with. She was at her absolute wits' end by Friday. After finally pressing "send" on an email to Gabriel Agreste that she'd never wanted to send, she was too upset to eat dinner and too tired to cry. She went to her room and fell asleep with her clothes on, only to be woken up early Saturday morning to an alert on her news feed that said a bad karaoke singer was holding hostage the panel of the popular new show, Who's Got Any Talent? She delayed a lot longer than she should have getting her spots on that morning, and it was hard to hurry to the scene.

Marinette had never been more happy to see anyone than she was when she arrived at the TV studio and found a blond girl in a yellow-and-black-stripped super suit there, with her arm around a crying akumatized karaoke singer.

"Honey, believe me. The only person who needs to think you have an amazing voice is you! Who cares what that stupid panel thinks? None of them can sing anyway."

"Queen Bee," Marinette said in relief.

Her friend looked up at her and winked. "Hey, look who came to see you?" she said to the singer. "Are you ready for your performance?"

The singer wiped her eyes, sniffed and said, "Hi, Ladybug." Then she stood, picked up a microphone that had been sitting next to her, and said, "For you, I'm going to sing one of my favorites."

"Oh, uh, okay," Marinette said. She went over to Queen Bee and sat down next to her. "Go ahead, I guess."

Then she and Queen Bee cheered the girl through the worst rendition of Titanium Marinette had ever heard, at the end of which, Queen Bee called out, "Remember what I told you about how to end that song with star power!"

"Right!" the singer said, and she held out the microphone. "Mic drop!"

The microphone fell hard and cracked, and a purple akuma flew out.

"Easy as pie," Queen Bee whispered while Marinette quickly captured the akuma, and they both refrained from giggling until the karaoke singer had regained her senses and the television production team had headed home.

Queen Bee was one of five miraculous holders that had been given their miraculouses by Master Fu after Ladybug and Chat Noir had come onto the scene in Paris. Marinette knew Master Fu thanks to a meeting Tikki had arranged for her after she'd found an ancient and very valuable book about the origin of the miraculouses, but Master Fu was another secret she'd kept from Chat Noir. "Until it's safe for you to share all of your miraculous secrets with your partner, I suggest you share none," Master Fu had said to her once, and Tikki had firmly agreed.

Of the five new miraculous holders, Queen Bee was the only one that lived in Paris with Ladybug and Chat Noir. The others had spread out across Europe, and Marinette hadn't even met all of them. But Queen Bee made herself hard to ignore.

"Want to go back to my place?" Queen Bee asked when the karaoke madness had ended. "You and Tikki can recharge in my room while I order room service for us for lunch."

Queen Bee didn't know Ladybug's identity, but she never asked and she was always really good about giving Marinette privacy when Tikki needed to regain her energy.

"Thanks," Marinette said. "And thanks for coming this morning. I know you usually work solo."

"Well, I hardly need the help with what I do," Queen Bee said. "But you seem off your game, and this vic was in my wheelhouse."

She was right. Most of Queen Bee's work involved talking to people who were vulnerable to Hawk Mouth because they were feeling bad about themselves. She was especially good at helping young women with self-image problems.

Which was funny, because Marinette did know Queen Bee's identity, and…

"BT-dubs, I expect all the deets on Chat, Ladybug, because I am dying over Adrien, and I won't feel good about complaining if I don't let you have a turn."

"Okay, Chloé," Marinette said. "That sounds like a fair trade."


A visit with Chloé/Queen Bee always left Marinette feeling mildly confused. It had been disorienting to discover that Chloe had been chosen by one of the miraculouses, even if that miraculous was a very self-righteous little thing.

"Just pretend that she's prettier than I am," Tikki had advised, "And we'll all get along just fine."

It had taken Marinette some time to get used to Chloé's nice side, though, and even longer before she'd realized that Chloé's big problem was her own self-confidence. Somewhere beneath all that perfect hair and pastel lipstick was a girl who was never sure if her friends liked her for her or her daddy's money and power. Also, her mother had left her and her dad years before for another man. Chloé still saw her, but not often, and the way she talked about her mom now made Marinette think their relationship wasn't very close. But Chloé adored Ladybug, and truthfully, becoming friends with Chloé had been a lot easier than Marinette had expected. Chloé didn't even care that Ladybug knew who she was.

"Of course you do," she'd said. "I'm, like, your biggest fan. You probably know all kinds of things about me."

Chloé was the only person other than Tikki who knew about Ladybug's problem with Chat Noir, too. Marinette had confessed to Chloé over the summer. She'd felt weirdly disloyal to Alya telling Chloé her secret, but Alya wasn't a miraculous holder. Marinette couldn't exactly tell her about everything that had happened between her and Chat. Chloé knew Chat Noir, and she'd spent a lot of time with them as superheroes, patrolling, training and sometimes just talking.

From time to time, they'd worked as a trio, too — an event Chat always said was particularly obnoxious because Queen Bee was as likely as Ladybug to make a dig at him during a fight. He said it was like being rejected by two women at once, though he'd only ever really flirted with Ladybug. Marinette had wondered sometimes what Chat would have thought if he'd realized that both she and Queen Bee were brushing him off because they were busy obsessing over Adrien Agreste. She'd never told Chat about her crush on Adrien, and as far as she knew, Queen Bee never had either. "Because it's girl talk, Ladybug," she'd told Marinette once. And she certainly liked her girl time.

"I swear, Ladybug. Sometimes I don't think Adrien even sees me," Queen Bee said as they lounged in her room Saturday with fancy salads from the hotel restaurant. Tikki had thoroughly enjoyed her gourmet cookie recharge, but Marinette was glad the restaurant had something light on the menu. She still wasn't feeling very well.

"Maybe you should move on," Marinette said. "I think as long as you're trying so hard to get Adrien, he's never going to be able to see you the way you want him to." (He was never going to see Chloé that way no matter what she did, Marinette thought. So the poor girl really needed to move on for her own good.)

"Says the girl who's sending messages to her would-be lover through the local news station," Chloé said. "How many times did you say it this week? Twice? Three times?"

Marinette cringed. She had been caught by news reporters a few times over the course of the week — it had been a busy week — and both times she'd said the same thing she'd said before to Chat when she'd had the opportunity: "Chat Noir, wherever you are, we need you in Paris. I need you. Please come back."

It hurt more every time she had to do it.

"Honestly, I'm getting legit worried about him," Chloé continued. "You know, that akuma is still out there, and the more you pester Chat, the more emotional he's likely to get. You know if you push him over the edge, the akuma will take him over again."

"Yeah, but at least then he might come find me," Marinette said.

"And you'd have to break his heart again," Chloé pointed out.

That was true. That Marinette was not looking forward to.

"And it could be multiplying too, Ladybug. Can you imagine a bunch of people all wandering around Paris and trying to get the truth out of each other? Most of these people do not need to know what they really look like or what their friends really think of them."

"I'll keep that in mind," Marinette said.

Chloé set aside her salad. "I'm serious, Ladybug. You need to figure out how to find him before the akuma does. Who knows how much worse he'll be next time? Your identities are both at stake."

"But-"

"No buts." Chloé shook her finger at Marinette. "You are one of the smartest, most creative women I know. Find a way, okay? And if there's anything I can do to help you, all you have to do is ask."


Adrien was in Marinette's room, pacing back and forth, and eying the weirdest pile of laundry he'd ever seen. If he didn't know Marinette better, he'd have thought she had a scarecrow on her floor. A headless scarecrow. Of herself.

Or maybe it was just a pile of laundry and he was seeing things. He was having a very unsettling day. Finding out Marinette had quit the mentorship program had been bad. Meeting Master Fu had been weird. Flipping through another black cat's journal while he was in the car after therapy had been frightening. He'd slammed the book shut after only a few pages. Antoine had started that thing with a graphic description of how his Ladybug died. "Hey Gorilla, do you think maybe we could go to Marinette's place?" Adrien had said then, and the look Gorilla gave him had been…disturbing…

So yeah. He was unsettled. To say the least.

Even the plate of warm, gooey cookies on Marinette's desk that her parents had sent up here with him wasn't helping. And those were delicious cookies, that he'd had four of already. But the looks her parents had given him when he'd shown up at the bakery this afternoon had been odd, too, so maybe that's why the cookies weren't calming him down. There was definitely something going on in Marinette's house. Otherwise, her parents wouldn't have looked so…surreptitiously at him.

He sat down on the lounger in Marinette's room and wiped his hands against his slacks. This was bad. When was Marinette going to be back? Should he leave? He'd been really afraid this morning of showing up here to talk to her about the mentorship program, and he still wasn't sure he was doing the right thing. Honestly, no matter how many times he'd rehearsed what he wanted to say to her about the Gabriel program, he couldn't shake the thought that he was being incredibly selfish by putting himself back in her life. Marinette's room was so adorably pink and cheery, and she had this way of smiling with her eyes that made it feel like everything in the world was going to be okay. He wondered if his final decision to come here had something to do with that.

The lower hatch to the room opened, and Adrien jumped away from the lounger as Marinette appeared at the top of the stairs.

She looked up at him. "Adrien? Mom and Dad said you've been here for almost an hour. I didn't know you were coming over." She climbed the rest of the stairs and closed the hatch behind her.

Marinette was pretty. Big blue eyes framed with lush eyelashes. Sweet pink lips below a delicate nose. Thick black hair that she usually pulled back into a low ponytail or a single braid. He wondered what that hair looked liked loose and wondered if she would be okay with him hugging her.

She stood in front of him, looking hard at him, and said, "Are you okay, Adrien?"

He said, "Hey, Marinette." He was not okay, though — and the decision to come here probably had been extremely, incredibly selfish — but he launched himself forward to hug her before he could think about what he was doing.

That had not been his plan.

She made a noise like she was a squeaky toy and for a second he thought he had just done something very wrong. he loosened up the hug in case she wanted to back away. Instead, she put her arms lightly around his back. He thought that was a good sign, so he tucked his chin behind her head, closed his eyes, and held on. It had never really occurred to him before, but Marinette had a similar build to Ladybug. Why hadn't he noticed? Did he have a type?

After a while, Marinette shifted a bit and said, "Adrien? I'm worried about you."

He took a deep, shaky breath without letting her go. This did feel a lot like holding Ladybug, but with Ladybug, he never knew who it was he was really holding. With Marinette, he knew exactly who he was holding, unmasked, with no secrets to hide. She smelled nice. Like something flowery and pastry at the same time.

"Adrien?" she tried again.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he pulled back enough to see her face. Her eyes had even darker circles under them than normal, and they were guarded. She wasn't smiling. He was not sure why he had the urge to lean in and kiss her. As if somehow that would make her smile. "I meant to come here to talk you out of quitting the Gabriel program," he said instead. "But I…kind of had a meeting this morning that upset me." The weird pile of laundry caught his eye behind her shoulder. "Why do you have a scarecrow on your floor, Marinette?"

Marinette backed away and blushed profusely. "I'm glad you came by, Adrien. Do you…want to talk about your meeting? We had a bunch of big orders this week, but Mom and Dad said they pretty much had everything finished now." She went to her desk, picked up a cookie with a napkin, and held it out to him like it was a peace offering of some kind. "Want one?"

"I've had four," he admitted. "They're really good."

She sat down in a roller chair by her desk and began nibbling on the cookie herself. "So what happened? We never got to finish our conversation from earlier in the week. Was it about the girl?"

Now Adrien blushed. It had been about two girls, one of whom was sitting in a chair right in front of him. He shook his head and sank back down on her lounger. "No, but…

"So was it about the St. Petersburg thing instead? I can't believe you might be moving all the way to Russia."

"Me neither," he said, thinking about stupid Larisa. "But hey…I'm supposed to be here to talk about you, not me. We…my dad and I…don't understand why you quit the program." He nodded toward a table in the corner where her sewing machine was sitting. "Fashion design is your dream, and my dad thinks you're really talented. What happened this week?"

She picked up a second cookie and broke off a piece with a snort. "My sewing machine is gathering dust in the corner." She popped the bite of cookie into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. "Adrien, I appreciate the support, but I don't have time for the Gabriel program right now, no matter how great it would have been."

"But you've always made room for the things you care about," he argued. "You didn't have time to be on student council either, and you did that. You don't have time for babysitting, and you do that too."

She frowned. "I don't babysit much anymore, actually. And I'm thinking of quitting student council."

"In your last year?" Adrien was shocked. "Marinette, what's going on with you? Why are you so busy?"

She looked away from him. "What was your meeting about, Adrien?"

He was not sure what to do with that. He had always assumed that if he asked her what was going on, she would tell him. He thought he was only stuck worrying about her because he'd backed away from their friendship. It had never occurred to him that there might be something she just wanted to keep away from him. He looked down, too, and the scarecrow caught his attention one more time. "I guess there are things neither of us want to talk about," he said. "But it's your turn. Will you at least tell me the story on the clothes?"

She winced. "It's embarrassing."

He folded his arms stubbornly. "I told you about the girl. It can't be that embarrassing."

"That wasn't embarrassing at all," she said. "That's just a story about you and someone you love." She took a deep breath. "If I tell you my story, you can't tell anyone."

"Why would I tell someone anything you told me?"

She pseudo-smiled. "Yeah, I know you don't gossip or anything. But this is kind of about a high-profile person."

"Okay…"

"And you already know part of it, I guess. You know Chat Noir was the one that brought me to the hospital earlier in the summer after…?"

Adrien knew that all too well. "Yeah, of course."

She began twisting the napkin she'd been using in her hands. "Well, I never got to thank him. I was unconscious by the time I arrived at the hospital. And he left me a note later to say goodbye, but…"

Adrien wished he had some ginseng tea right now. If Marinette's stress was about Chat Noir, then this day wasn't getting any easier for him. "He's the superhero, Marinette," he said lightly. "I'm sure he wasn't expecting you to thank him. Seems more like he should have been thanking you anyway."

She was now tearing the napkin apart. "But I saw things…"

Adrien tried not to stiffen. "What do you mean?" he asked as casually as possible. Surely if she had seen him transform, she'd have told him? But now his stomach was very sick and his heart was slamming against his chest.

"He was…when I…I don't know how to explain this." She rolled in her chair toward a metal wastebasket, put the destroyed napkin in it, and then reached for a tissue from a box on her desk and dabbed her eyes before looking back at him. "He's not just a superhero, Adrien. There's a person under that suit, and I think he was really hurting that night. So I…just want to be able to talk to him, I guess. To the person, you know? Not the superhero. And I think maybe he wants to talk to me, too, because…" She sniff-laughed and dabbed at her eyes again. "He's come to my house a few times. Don't think too bad of me, but he always runs away before we can talk, and the scarecrow is sort of part of a trap to get him inside if he ever comes back. My whole room is rigged so that it'll look like I'm in trouble if he shows up at my window and thinks of running again. I know that must sound terrible, but I just really need to talk to him…"

Adrien was…floored. Marinette had set up a trap for him. As Chat Noir. A clever trap, apparently, that probably would have caught him. If she hadn't just told him all about it. He felt like he'd dodged a bullet he'd really deserved to get hit by.

Also, she'd figured out that Chat Noir wasn't just a superhero, and she wanted to talk to the person under Chat's mask.

She wanted to talk to him.

He considered taking another cookie just to keep himself from saying anything right away. He didn't even know what to do with that.

She sniffed again and his eyes flashed to her face. She was dabbing away more than a couple of stray tears.

"Don't look," she said pitifully. "I know how silly this must seem. I look like a dumb fangirl."

She did not look like a stupid fangirl. She looked like…

"Oh," Adrien said stupidly, as something he had not anticipated occurred to him.

She laughed sadly and continued crying.

He was getting this all wrong. He got up, pulled a second roller chair close to hers, sat down in it and touched her arm. "You don't look like a fangirl," he said. "I, uh, think maybe you have a thing for Chat Noir, though."

She wiped her eyes again. "I'm so sorry. You have no idea how weird it is for me to talk to you about this."

"Why?" he said, trying to make his voice bright in a way that wouldn't give away that it was weird for him — Chat Noir — to be listening to her talk about this, too. "It's fine, Marinette. So you have a little crush on Chat Noir? So what? I think Ladybug's totally hot."

She began giggling while she cleaned mascara from below her eyes. "You think Ladybug's hot?"

"Well yeah. What kind of guy wouldn't think Ladybug's hot?"

She was still giggling. He liked the sound, but he should have caught on that she was practically hysterical when she said, "Oh, so you're into girls who walk around in skin-tight suits, huh?"

He did not catch on. He scratched his neck and said, "Is that wrong?"

And then her crying morphed into full-blown weeping.

He was an idiot. He rolled his chair as close as he could get it and caught her against him in a hug again. "Whoa, Marinette. I was joking. I'm sorry. What just happened?"

"There's a person underneath Chat Noir's suit," she sobbed. "A guy, Adrien. Like you. Someone who goes to school and has parents and friends and thinks about his future and...and about people he loves. And he's really really hurt, and I need to explain something to him because…"

Her tears were soaking through his shirt, she was shaking, and all his breath had disappeared from his body because he had finally figured out what was really going on and the weight of it all was crushing him from the inside. "Because you're in love with him, aren't you?" he whispered.

She pushed him back gently, but firmly, then curled herself up in that chair and began to cry even harder. "I don't think I'm up for company right now."

And Adrien knew that she deserved the truth, but how could he tell her now? How could he tell this amazing girl, who would have loved him as his whole self, that he was the person she was crying over? How could he do that to her, when he'd told her only days before that he was in love with some other girl?

Adrien leaned down toward her with some instinct he wasn't controlling, brushed a few loose locks of hair away from her face, and kissed her temple. Once. Fast. Then again, letting his lips linger on her skin that time. "It's going to be okay," he said, and he had no idea if that was the lie of the century, but he did know that something in his heart had just changed. "I'm going to call you later, and I still want to talk to you about the Gabriel program, but for tonight we can talk about something that doesn't hurt. Maybe I'll tell you about my Russian tutor."

He stood up. She found another tissue and blew her nose.

"Okay?" he said hopefully.

"Okay," she said through teary, but not hopeless eyes.

Then he left. But only for now, he told himself. Because his heart was tired of loving a shadow, and Marinette deserved better than that, too. It was time for them both to move on from superheroes. It was time for them both to love someone real who could love them back.


Author's Note:

I feel like I should be issuing a warning. This whole story is about to deteriorate into cuddle fluff for a while. Because I just really believe that the first relationship in the square to mature has to be Adrinette, and that's a cuddleship for me in the first instance. So, uh, grab a blanket.